With a budget of $500
Refurbished Dell
i7 Intel processor
8 gigs of at least DDR3 ram
250 gig SSD with a SATA 500 gig drive (best case would be a new Samsung 1 TB SSD and whatever the computer came with)
some sort of interface to plug a guitar or mic into.

I looked on Amazon...

From Amazon for $429. This looks likes a pretty solid machine. Needs a bigger drive. Samsung SSD 860 EVO 1TB 2.5 Inch SATA III Internal SSD (MZ-76E1T0B/AM) on sale, black Monday $99.

Dell Optiplex Gaming PC 3020 SFF Computer - Core i7 4770 3.4 GHz, NVIDIA GT 1030 2GB, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, HDMI, DVI, VGA, DVD-ROM Drive, Keyboard, Mouse, WiFi, Windows 10 Professional(Renewed)

This will run most anything and there are ways to deal with the limited amount of ram.

Cheers,

Billy


“Amazing! I’ll be working with Jaco Pastorius, Charlie Parker, Art Tatum, and Buddy Rich, and you’re telling me it’s not that great of a gig?
“Well…” Saint Peter, hesitated, “God’s got this girlfriend who thinks she can sing…”